It’s been a while since I’ve taken a 7-day break from blogging. And you know what it’s clarified? It clarified that I obsess—a lot and I suffer from a little bad faith (and I don’t mean in the religious sense). That’s right, I had a week long battle with my annoying self.

In the background of that, I did a lot of Instagramming to try to combat the ebbing creativity. If you follow me there, then you know I go through these manic periods of shooting a lot to almost none. Which by the way, dear friends, PLEASE tell me when I write maniac instead of manic. Because I’m pretty sure given the two, manic is the lesser one. (Of course I’m viewing the two as wholly separate of one of another rather than one being a derivative of the other). For real—look, “manic” even has one less letter.

What do you do when creativity stands you up? Sure you can give it the big finger, but being the giver and receiver on that one ain’t so great. So if you are anything like me you’ll probably log a few time killers by giving into a few distractions. Which of course leads to a few moments of mental bartering between shortcomings and half truths – an exhausting excerise of excuse making.

I know—weak.

This creative void being the current state as it is, I decided to go back to basics with this mixed berry tart. A simple but rich tasting tart with enough mixed berries to give a sweet and slighlty tart profile, while the crust lends a supporting structure of buttery flakiness and nutty flavoring by way of adding toasted homemade almond meal. Along with that is a sprinkling of cardamom in the crust for a little added dimension.

So that happened (see title). Sounds like an event or something, right? Well I might possibly have something there by qualifying this cupcake as an event with its stuffing and fluffing—oh, get your minds out of the gutter, because following up the stuffing and fluffing is torching. See why you didn’t want to go there. Now back to the food. Yeah, there’s a lot going on, but don’t worry, it comes together in a face-stuffing sort of way.

And every time I make something like this, I sort of laugh with anticipation that I will receive a text from a friend that reads, “You make disgusting food”. Really, no lie, that’s my reality. From there it usually goes into, “Who eats that stuff – too sweet, too much going on, too fattening, too this, too that, and too everything that’s anti-sweet”. I know—be glad I’m telling you now to close your disbelieving mouth, because I always forget and sit there slack jawed, hunched over my phone texting back and forth until my cramping thumbs scream at me to stop engaging crazy.